Rachel Alexander 05 - The Wrong Dog

I’d ever heard and one, I had the feeling, I would regret, more than once in the weeks to come, having listened to. Even then, right there at the dog run, I began thinking about issues that made me really uncomfortable, that shook me to my very soul and threatened to alter everything I ever thought I knew before this conversation took place, before I met Sophie Gordon. As she talked and I listened, I told myself it would be smarter to not get involved, to just plain quit. But, like Sophie, I couldn’t walk away from it. And curiosity was only one of the reasons why.
    I’d been only seven and a half when my father died. He had gone to work that day as he always did, and come home right on time. After dinner, he’d played chess with me and listened to Lili read a story she’d written for school. Later he’d come to my room to kiss me good night. Then he’d gotten into his own bed to read before going to sleep —For Whom the Bell Tolls, which he’d taken out of the library the weekend before. When his eyes had grown tired, he’d kissed my mother and turned off the lamp. In the morning, she couldn’t wake him.
    For several weeks, the book my father had been reading lay on his nightstand, just where he’d left it, an empty envelope holding his place. When my mother finally returned it to the library, I’d cried and cried, as if the continued presence of the book on his nightstand meant death was only a temporary condition. For the longest time, nights when I refused to let myself fall asleep for fear that, like my father, I’d never wake up, I imagined my father miraculously returning, looking for his book and feeling disappointed to find he couldn’t finish what he’d started.
    So now, all these years later, even if my client is dead, and there’s no one to answer to, and no one to pay my fee, I’m doing what I was asked to do. Despite the fact that part of me doesn’t want to know the answers I’m risking my life to find out, I have trouble leaving things unfinished, even things that, God knows, I never should have started in the first place.

Chapter 2
    We Know Everything We Have To Know, She Said

    “It was a good thing Smitty was leaning against my legs because, as you might imagine, I felt as if I might float away without her weight there to ground me. I was flabbergasted.”
    “But intrigued enough to stay.”
    “Yes. I was. You see, once Blanche had been diagnosed with arthritis, I was forced to face the possibility of losing her.”
    I raised a hand to interrupt, but Sophie went right on.
    “Oh, I don’t mean I was contemplating the ultimate loss. I had every reason to believe that was years away. It was the loss of her ability to help me that worried me. If the day came that she was in a lot of pain and I couldn’t help her feel better, I figured her own troubles would fill her consciousness and she would no longer be able to concentrate on me enough to warn me when a seizure was coming.”
    “That makes sense,” I said.
    “Before Blanche, I used to just black out, no matter where I was. Some epileptics get warnings, a feeling that something awful is going to happen. But I don’t. I’m not aware of anything until I wake up, sometimes bruised and banged up, sometimes with strangers around me, staring at me with a mixture of concern and ...” Sophie turned away for a moment. “Revulsion,” she whispered. “Even fear, the knowledge that what they are witnessing might happen to them. You know how people are. They don’t want to hear about—.” She lifted one hand into the air. “But that was before Blanche. Now, in fact, I can avoid most seizures because she lets me know they’re coming, so I can take a pill. And if the medication doesn’t work—it doesn’t, always— because Blanche has warned me, I can almost always take myself out of harm’s way. When I wake up, instead of a bunch of strangers, there’s Blanche, lying next to me and licking my face.” She slid her fingers under her glasses to wipe her eyes. “She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life, Rachel. I could never put into words how much I love my dog. Nor how grateful I am to have her in my life.”
    I looked over at Dashiell for a moment, then nodded at Sophie.
    How could she have turned away from Loma and gone home?
    How could she have said no to such a tantalizing offer?
    On the other hand, what exactly would Side by Side give her?
    I tried to remember how long ago I’d read that